How to Make Investments When You Need Cashflow

Why Do You Need Both?

To build your funds up in the long term, you’ll probably know that you need to have your money working for you. It’s no good just having it sat in a savings account doing nothing. If you’re in a position to do so, it benefits massively to have investments that gradually accumulate while you focus on other things – like day-to-day cashflow. It’s the cashflow that keeps you afloat by the month, but it’s the investments that take you to the next level in the future.

Everyone would want to have a good combination of the two, but it’s easier said than done. If you’re like me and looked into online money-making opportunities because you started with very low funds, investments will be the last things you’re thinking of when you’re trying to just get by. But you’ll forever just chase cashflow if you don’t make a few investments.

In my world, investments come in all shapes and forms, especially when it comes to business models. At a basic level, you can see things like freelancing as cashflow, whereas maintaining a website would be an investment (albeit a time investment, and one that can create cashflow too).

Here are the things I think you need to do to balance the combination of long-term investments and regular cash income:

Be Honest with Yourself

Straight in with the fundamentals. You must keep it real with yourself and face your situation. Be honest about your (or your business’s) financial situation. Is the cashflow consistent enough to make any investments? Would you have the time to fit anything else in?

At this stage you’ll need to budget, make short-term and long-term goals, and take action based on this. Unless you know exactly how much money has to leave your bank account every month, you won’t know exactly how much you can commit to other slow burning investments.

Manage Your Distractions

While we may not be able to get rid of all the distractions that come our way, I’m sure most people can figure out ways to reduce the time-wasting things that stray their way. Do you need to cut down on your TV time, need to take an Instagram break or you just need to spend more time at home? Figure out what’s draining your time and how you’re going to manage it.

How are you ever going to get to your goals if your lifestyle doesn’t alter? Tough decisions will be made, but as long as it’s for the right reasons, it will pay off in the end.

Get Help

I’m a massive advocate for outsourcing. There’s only so much we can do by ourselves, which is why it’s so vital to offload it to others. If you’ve pretty much mastered your main cashflow, work out if there are elements of it that you can pay others to do for you. Free up some of your time so you have more opportunity to think about how you’re going to make some worthwhile investments.

If your investment is a website or another web asset that improves gradually over time (like a social media account), it may even be worth outsourcing the growth of that instead. Whatever you do, make sure you’re freeing your hands up a little. I’ve done this myself using a VAs. If you’re looking for UK-based assistance, People Per Hour is the place to go. (Click here to get £30 to spend there for free).

Stay Focused

It’s time to get your tunnel vision on. Once you have the goals and you know what investments you’re going to make, it’s a matter of keeping at it. Once you have your action plan in place, tackle it piece by piece. Make sure that you’re still growing your cashflow, and that it’s feeding into the investment(s).

My favourite way to work is using Trello boards. The way I’ve created mine means that I always know what I need to work on each week, and I can always plan months ahead for the longer term projects (without completely forgetting about them).

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- Chiino
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